Duane Morris Sports Law

On September 28, 2026, the U.S. Senate passed the Protect College Sports Act (S.4668), as amended, by a 77-22 vote, marking the first time either chamber of Congress has approved sweeping federal legislation governing college athletics. The bill was unveiled in late May 2026 and formally introduced on June 2, 2026, by Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA). The Senate-passed version differs substantially from the introduced bill after revisions in August and September and three floor amendments. It represents the most comprehensive federal attempt to bring legal order to a college sports landscape that has been operating under a patchwork of state NIL laws, court rulings, and evolving NCAA policies since states began passing their own NIL statutes in 2021. As the Duane Morris Sports Law Blog noted when the bill was first introduced, the legislation’s significance for universities and conferences “cannot be overstated,” as it addresses the structural chaos that has defined college athletics in the post-NIL era. For college and university general counsel, athletic directors, and compliance officers, the immediate question is what issues should be anticipated now.

Key Provisions of the Bill

The bill’s material provisions are wide-ranging and would fundamentally reshape the governance of college sports. At a high level, the Protect College Sports Act would:

• Establish a uniform federal NIL framework, preempting specified state-law requirements concerning NIL, transfers, eligibility, and student status and academics, while preserving state tort, civil rights, contract, consumer protection, and similar laws, including personal-injury claims alleging inadequate health or safety measures.
• Lock the House v. NCAA revenue-sharing model into federal law, maintaining an approximately $21.3 million per-school annual cap for 2026-27 (up from $20.5 million in 2025-26, with 4% annual increases and a three-year reset at 22% of average shared revenue), while creating a $22.5 million retention fund plus up to $5 million more unlocked dollar-for-dollar by compensation or NIL spending on women’s, Olympic, and other non-revenue sports (maximum $27.5 million; total potential outlays of about $48.8 million).
• Grant the NCAA and conferences a limited antitrust exemption to enforce rules governing eligibility, transfers, and compensation — a protection the industry has sought for years through multiple failed legislative efforts.
• Impose transfer restrictions, limiting athletes to one transfer before a mandatory eligibility pause, with a five-year playing window capped at age 24.
• Create a federal agent registry capping representation fees at 5% and requiring athletes to report NIL deals exceeding $600.
• Mandate health and academic protections, including coverage of out-of-pocket medical costs for sports-related injuries for five years post-competition and provisions to protect opportunities in women’s and Olympic sports.

A Closer Look: The Provisions That Will Drive Institutional Risk

The headline provisions tell only part of the story. For institutions, the more consequential features sit in the bill’s mechanics, and several deserve closer scrutiny.

The compensation architecture. The bill does more than preserve the House cap. For 2026-27, the cap would be approximately $21.3 million per school (up from $20.5 million in 2025-26), with 4% annual increases and a three-year reset at 22% of average shared revenue. Schools could exceed the cap by up to $22.5 million annually through a retention fund for athletes who completed at least one full season, plus up to $5 million more unlocked dollar-for-dollar by compensation or NIL spending on women’s, Olympic, and other non-revenue sports (maximum $27.5 million), for potential total outlays of about $48.8 million. Under Sec. 115, the cap and retention fund end when the House settlement expires or terminates unless Congress passes a joint resolution; defendants must give Congress 180 days’ notice. The retention fund also sunsets nine years after enactment and is conditioned on academic benchmarks. Institutions should therefore build expiration, sunset, and academic-performance scenarios into athletics budgets rather than treat above-cap spending as permanent.

Third-party NIL and the “associated entity” test. Athletes could continue to sign outside NIL deals, but those agreements would have to serve a legitimate commercial purpose and reflect the athlete’s market value. The Senate bill adopts the House settlement’s definition of “associated entity,” including boosters and collectives, which reaches, among others, individuals who have given more than $50,000 to the athletics program. Compensation from associated entities counts toward the cap, and those deals must serve a valid business purpose and be commensurate with market comparables. The bill adds a three-part certification requirement: multimedia rights holders, sponsors, apparel companies, and vendors must certify that the institution is not the source of the athlete’s compensation; the actual funder must certify that it is the true source; and the institution, if required, must certify that it is not using the arrangement to circumvent the cap. Since NIL Go launched in June 2025, the CSC had declined to clear 1,812 deals worth roughly $90 million as of its July 2026 report, about 20% of submitted dollars. As we noted when the bill was introduced, the CSC has taken the position that redirecting corporate sponsorship dollars to rosters as third-party NIL is a way of circumventing the cap, and the bill would empower the CSC to police that conduct. Schools whose donor and collective relationships have been structured around that practice should assume those arrangements will be examined closely.

Reporting obligations. Athletes would be required to report NIL deals exceeding $600, aggregated over a 12-month period and inflation-adjusted, to their school and association within five days. A five-day window is tight. The athlete bears the reporting duty, but the institution will realistically bear the operational burden of intake, tracking, and follow-up, and of explaining any gaps.

The antitrust shield, and its limits. The limited antitrust exemption is the structural foundation on which the rest of the bill rests, and it has eluded the industry through years of failed legislative attempts, including the House’s SCORE Act, which stalled before a floor vote. The sponsors have framed the Sec. 118 protection as targeted legal certainty rather than blanket immunity. The safe harbor is conditional: it applies only if the association adopts rules implementing all covered categories, and compliance with the revenue cap is a condition. The bill also creates a private right of action for athletes, subject to 30-day notice and cure, except for physical injury, death, or sexual abuse claims; pre-dispute arbitration is barred. That distinction matters. The protection attaches to enforcement of the new rules, so institutions and conferences that act outside the statutory framework should not assume they are insulated from suit.

Governance, coaching, and media rights. The bill limits in-season coaching movement for FBS football coaches and key staff taking over another program in the same season. It also imposes merger and acquisition limits on power conferences with more than $700 million in revenue, sets a 20-member ceiling (raised from 19 by the adopted Moody-Blumenthal floor amendment), provides a three-year independent period for schools switching power conferences that sunsets after six years, and bars entities such as private equity from acquiring schools’ media rights to form a new league. Media pooling requires approval from 75% of FBS institutions. These changes carry direct contractual and governance consequences for athletic departments and conference offices. Proponents estimate pooled media rights could generate $4 billion to $8 billion in additional revenue, although the SEC and Big Ten have said they would not participate. Notably, a floor amendment to cap coach pay at $5 million narrowly failed, but institutions with more than $80 million in athletic revenue may not pay coaches more than $500,000 from funds other than college sports revenue or athletic-department donations.

Health and safety mandates. Schools would be required to cover out-of-pocket medical costs for sports-related injuries, including for five years after an athlete’s final competition, and to carry catastrophic injury coverage above $90,000. The bill would also establish a $60 million association medical trust fund, expandable to $100 million, for lower-revenue schools and long-term conditions such as CTE, and guarantee scholarship and degree completion for 10 years after eligibility ends. These are new, affirmative federal standards, and institutions that fall short face potential exposure.

What the bill leaves unresolved. Several open issues should be on every general counsel’s radar. First, the bill stays neutral on whether athletes are employees, which leaves the possibility of employee status or collective bargaining alive. Second, the bill includes a Title IX savings clause, while the House settlement has faced Title IX challenges on appeal at the Ninth Circuit. Third, the women’s and Olympic sports protection in Sec. 125 applies only to institutions with at least $50 million in athletic revenue, requires maintaining 2024-25 roster and scholarship levels, and is subject to nine-year and four-year sunsets. Fourth, the HBCU program authorizes, but does not appropriate, $180 million per year for fiscal years 2027-2032. Federal preemption will simplify some questions, but narrowed preemption and preserved state-law claims will not eliminate litigation risk.

The Senate Vote and the Road Ahead

The bill passed late Monday night after nearly six hours of debate. The Senate voted on seven amendments, three of which were adopted: the Baldwin preemption carve-out (96-1), the Scott foreign-financing disclosure amendment, and the Moody-Blumenthal amendment raising the membership ceiling to 20. Opposition was pointed. Sen. Cory Booker urged colleagues to postpone the vote, citing the bill’s impact on athletes, especially Black athletes, and all four Black Democrats in the Senate voted against the procedural motion on a bill strongly opposed by the NAACP.

The adopted Scott amendment requires colleges, conferences, and associations to disclose amounts over $600 received from a foreign adversary, state-owned enterprise, or sovereign wealth fund.

While the Senate vote was a landmark moment, the bill’s path to enactment remains uncertain. The House of Representatives is not scheduled to return until November 9, 2026, after the midterms, and will face competing priorities including a government funding deadline on December 11. Critically, if the House does not pass the bill before the new Congress is sworn in on January 3, 2027, the legislation dies. The House’s own college sports bill — the SCORE Act — never reached a House floor vote, and House Republicans have signaled they want changes, including a ban on athlete employment status, limits on international players (including the proposed TEAM USA Act’s 20% roster limit), the conference-expansion clause, the private right of action, and HBCU funding. Any House changes would send the bill back to the Senate. Speaker Johnson has said he will take it up after the midterms. That said, President Trump has publicly urged lawmakers to pass the bill, and the strong bipartisan Senate vote of 77-22 gives it meaningful momentum.

What Schools and Compliance Departments Should Be Doing Now

For universities and their compliance offices, now is the time to prepare rather than wait. As the Duane Morris Sports Law Blog has advised, institutions “should not wait for final passage to begin preparing.” Stakeholders should closely monitor the House’s legislative calendar and any amendments that emerge, assess how the bill’s transfer restrictions and revenue-sharing caps would affect current roster management and NIL contract structures, and review compliance frameworks for the new agent registry and reporting requirements. Institutions that want to be ready should focus on the following:

• Audit existing NIL and revenue-sharing agreements. Review current athlete agreements against the bill’s legitimate-business-purpose and market-value requirements, and identify any contract terms that interact with the one-transfer rule and eligibility pause.
• Map donor and collective relationships. Identify boosters, collectives, and other parties that may qualify as associated entities under the House settlement definition, which reaches, among others, individuals who have given more than $50,000 to the athletics program. Sponsorship arrangements that route money to the roster should be revisited now.
• Build a reporting and intake process. Put systems in place to capture athlete-reported deals above $600 within the five-day window, and train athletes and staff on the obligation.
• Tie academic performance to budget planning. Because retention-fund eligibility depends on graduation and academic progress benchmarks, compliance should model where the institution stands before relying on above-cap spending.
• Prepare for agent regulation. Develop protocols to verify agent registration and the 5% fee cap, since athletic departments have been operating in a largely unregulated agent market. The FTC’s January 12, 2026, inquiry letters to 20 Division I universities under SPARTA already signal growing federal interest in this area.
• Review insurance and medical-cost coverage. Confirm that catastrophic injury coverage and post-eligibility medical obligations can be met, and price the long-tail cost of the five-year coverage requirement.
• Revisit coaching contracts and conference obligations. In-season coaching movement limits and media-rights pooling will affect employment agreements and conference-level commitments.
• Keep a Title IX and employment-status contingency plan. Neither issue is resolved by the bill, so institutions should keep monitoring the House appeal and labor developments.
• Run sunset and budget scenarios. Model the financial effects of the House settlement’s expiration and the retention fund’s nine-year sunset, including academic-benchmark contingencies.
• Build third-party certification protocols. Establish certification procedures for multimedia rights holders, sponsors, apparel companies, and vendors involved in NIL arrangements.
• Inventory foreign-funding disclosures. Identify amounts over $600 received from foreign adversaries, state-owned enterprises, and sovereign wealth funds and prepare the required reporting process.
• Review state-law litigation exposure. Reassess personal-injury, civil-rights, contract, consumer-protection, and similar claims in light of narrowed preemption and the private right of action.
• Check roster and scholarship baselines. Compare current women’s and Olympic sports rosters and scholarship levels against 2024-25 baselines.
• Review conference realignment and media-rights strategy. Assess the implications of the 20-member ceiling, power-conference limits, independent period, media-rights restrictions, and pooling requirements.

Whether the bill reaches the President’s desk in its current form, is modified in the House, or ultimately stalls, the direction of travel is clear: federal regulation of college sports is no longer a hypothetical — it is an active legislative reality that demands attention.

On May 27, 2026, Senators Cruz and Cantwell announced the Protect College Sports Act, a sweeping bipartisan bill that represents the most comprehensive federal attempt yet to impose legal order on college athletics. For universities and conferences, the significance of this legislation cannot be overstated. The bill would grant the NCAA and the College Sports Commission a long-sought limited antitrust exemption, enabling them to enforce rules governing athlete eligibility, transfers, and compensation ostensibly without the constant threat of state court litigation or competing state NIL regimes. The attempted antitrust shield, which has eluded the industry through years of failed legislative attempts – including the recently withdrawn SCORE Act – is the structural foundation on which the rest of the bill’s reforms rest. At the same time, the bill formalizes key elements of the House v. NCAA settlement into federal law, codifying the revenue-sharing framework while empowering the College Sports Commission (CSC) to police alleged above-cap spending – which the CSC has asserted includes the redirecting of corporate sponsorship dollars to rosters as third-party NIL to circumvent the $21.3 million annual cap.  

For some programs utilizing creative measures to compensate their athletes, passage of this bill would represent a fundamental change in the compliance environment. The bill also limits in-season coaching movement, prohibits the formation of a so-called super league, creates an agent registry capping representation fees at 5%, and permits the pooling of media rights – all provisions that carry direct contractual and governance consequences for athletic departments and conference offices.

If this bill is enacted into law, institutions will face substantial operational and legal challenges. The transfer restriction provisions alone – limiting athletes to one transfer before a mandatory eligibility pause, with narrow exceptions – will require universities to revisit their roster management strategies, revisit NIL and revenue-sharing contract structures, and reexamine how those agreements interact with transfer portal activity. The bill’s provisions around athlete health, safety, and academic protections establish new mandatory standards that institutions will be required to meet, creating potential exposure for schools that fall short. The agent registry and fee-cap provisions will require robust compliance frameworks for athletic departments accustomed to operating in a largely unregulated agent market. And, while codifying the House settlement structure may bring stability, it also locks institutions into a compensation model still under active appellate review for its Title IX implications.. Equally notable is what the bill does not resolve: it leaves the employment status of athletes largely open, explicitly preserving the possibility that athletes could eventually be deemed employees or pursue collective bargaining. For institutions, that means managing long-term labor risk under a federal framework that has not foreclosed the most consequential question in the industry.

The path to enactment remains uncertain. The bill’s reception has already revealed fault lines within the industry itself, as the SEC and Big Ten commissioners were notably absent from a letter endorsing the bill signed by ACC and Big 12 leadership, and SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey has publicly questioned the process of endorsing legislation before reviewing the final draft. Nonetheless, the bipartisan architecture of the bill gives it a realistic chance of advancing further than its predecessors. Universities and conferences should not wait for final passage to begin preparing. The attorneys at Duane Morris’s Sports Law Group are closely monitoring the bill’s progress and are available to assist universities, conferences, and other industry stakeholders in navigating the legal implications as this legislation develops.

The University of Utah is advancing a groundbreaking agreement with private-equity firm Otro Capital that is expected to generate more than $500 million for its athletics program. The deal creates a new for-profit entity, Utah Brands & Entertainment LLC, which will manage the commercial and revenue operations of the school’s athletic department, such as sponsorships, ticketing, licensing, concessions, and media-related revenue. The University of Utah will retain majority ownership and board control, while Otro Capital and a select group of major donors will acquire minority stakes.

This arrangement represents a significant shift in how a public university structures and finances its athletics operations. By blending private investment with donor participation, the model provides access to substantial capital at a time when athletic departments face rising costs tied to facilities, NIL activity, and anticipated revenue-sharing with student athletes. It also introduces new legal considerations, including governance design, transparency obligations for a for-profit entity attached to a public institution, and potential securities and conflict-of-interest issues arising from donor-investors gaining equity positions.

The partnership may also signal a broader trend toward hybrid public-private financing in college sports. The University of Utah is not the first to spin off its athletic department’s revenue streams into a private entity.  However, the creation of a new for-profit entity, one that is majority-owned by the school but supported by private investors, underscores how rapidly the financial pressures of college sports are accelerating. Rising operational costs, the expansion of NIL opportunities, and the likelihood of direct revenue sharing with athletes have pushed universities to explore alternative funding mechanisms. For college athletics more broadly, the University of Utah’s model may become a blueprint. By blending university control with outside capital and professionalized operational management, the structure is designed to meet the commercial realities of today’s sports landscape while still preserving institutional oversight. If successful, this could influence everything from facilities funding and media rights strategy to athlete compensation and long-term planning. It also raises larger questions about how institutions reconcile what they have long dubbed as “amateurism” and their mission, with the sport’s growing commercial pressures.

Ultimately, the deal signals a broader evolution: college athletics is moving quickly toward professionalized, capital-intensive operations, and private equity (or debt) is likely to become a more common part of that ecosystem.